I know the absolute last thing you want to be thinking about right now is the Christmas holiday, but this year RichRelevance is giving you your gift early. Today we released our “12 months of Christmas” white paper—chock full of best practices for retailers to help jump start their Holiday 2012 season planning.
For every month, we offer insights and best practices on ways to maximize your efforts in a variety of fields, including:
- Cross-Channel Marketing
- Mobile
- Search
- Social Media
- Email Marketing
You’re invited to get ahead of the curve, and start utilizing all of the opportunities you have at your fingertips right now to make your next holiday shopping season your best ever!
Happy (early) Holidays!
RichRelevance Chief Evangelist Jake Bailey, With the advent of shopping related media in the ad market today, it’s no surprise that many people have a hard time defining the right expectations for performance from their retail publishing partners.
Not long ago, it was unheard of for a brand or agency to be purchasing digital media on a retailer’s website. However, with the amount of cross-channel shopping that consumers are doing, and with the amount of influence that websites have on in-store purchases, it’s no longer something brand advertisers can ignore.
In fact, for many of the world’s largest CPG advertisers, it’s imperative to include retail websites in a standard up-front buy and/or digital media campaign.
As you may have seen, today we’ve announced some very exciting news regarding our acquisition of Searchandise Commerce. First of all, let me say that we’re thrilled about the combination of our companies. John Federman and his entire team at Searchanside have truly innovated within the Shopping Media industry, and the combination of our capabilities provides an incredible channel of value for both retailers and brands. By joining forces there is simply no company in the marketplace with a more powerful media offering within online retail. We couldn’t be more excited about the success that lies ahead of us. As importantly, the team members who’ve joined the RichRelevance family from Searchandise share so many of the {rr} values. Creating long-lasting value in the online retail world is just simply hard, so it’s paramount that our values are reflected across our core—by every one of our employees. The Searchandise product will be a key addition to our personalization platform. In these challenging economic times, Brand advertisers are being asked to do more with less, and Shopping Media provides them the most powerful tools to get more “bang for their buck.” Brands will now be able to have a true one-stop shop for their digital budgets within online retail, and retailers will also be able to add more content that accelerates the conversion cycle with their consumers. By combining search capabilities with our core personalization offerings, we’ve got a 1-2 combo which will be unbeatable! As you might guess, there’s a lot of innovation and integration to do, so we’ll have a lot more to share with our retail and brand partners, in the coming months. We’ve barely scratched the surface for what’s to come in 2012 and beyond—so stay posted. Innovation will be the name of the game for us in 2012. In the meantime, the Searchandise team, now officially part of Team RichRelevance, have made some great contributions to our Holiday Memories Blog – we invite you to partake in their stories and remember what’s most important at this time of the year, and frankly any time of the year: friends and family. We’re thrilled that Searchandise is now part of our family. ” target=”_blank”>our acquisition of Searchandise Commerce. First of all, let me say that we’re thrilled about the combination of our companies. John Federman and his entire team at Searchanside have truly innovated within the Shopping Media industry, and the combination of our capabilities provides an incredible channel of value for both retailers and brands. By joining forces there is simply no company in the marketplace with a more powerful media offering within online retail. We couldn’t be more excited about the success that lies ahead of us.
Raj Rao, of 3M, a brand advertising client of ours and a true thought leader in the marketing & advertising world recently wrote an article featured on Forbes.com about his experience with Shopping Media. Raj and his team at 3M are really pushing the envelope of innovation in digital marketing, utilizing our Shopping Media offerings on Walmart, Sears and Target.com that showcases brand creative in new ways and gain insights about shopping behavior as never before. You can read the article in it’s entirety here, but I believe the most poignant extract is Raj’s point of view herein:
“Nearly half of shoppers who begin their search on retail sites make a purchase in the physical store, while 40% transact online. Pew Research found that 87% of college grads and 88% of those earning $75,000 or more each year head online to research products or services.
These numbers are a wake-up call. We[manufacturers] are used to thinking of retailers as fellow marketers who spend billions on Facebook, Google, and agencies. The truth is that they’re also premium publishers who are looking to partner with us to build distinctive brand experiences to influence shoppers and maximize sales conversion.” – Raj Rao, 3M Global Director for Digital Marketing & eCommerce
I spent time at Web 2.0 SF recently, listening to presentations by industry leaders discussing the future of ecommerce. Several of the presentations were rehashed speeches from years past, but updated with this year’s buzzwords: “friending,” “Groupon” and “alien hand syndrome” (okay, I made that last one up, but I’d love to see that topic at a conference!)
My favorite session was presented by Alex Rampell, co-founder and CEO of TrialPay. Alex posed this interesting question to his audience: “What should you do when your customers aren’t searching for your keywords, and haven’t heard of your brand?”
Just like the popular children’s gamebook series from the 1980’s “Choose Your Own Adventure,” the world of QR marketing offers many paths to choose from, and is fraught with both landmines and opportunities. As a follow up to my recent post on QR codes, I put forth seven quick tips for you to consider, as you embark on your own 2D marketing adventure!
