Digital Marketing

RESTON, Va. - Retail e-commerce spending from desktop computers for the first 44 days of the November-December 2014 holiday season totaled $42.5 billion, up 15% versus the corresponding days last year. According to comScore.  

Woonsocket, R.I. – CVS/pharmacy is making it an omnichannel holiday for its customers this year. Consumers can follow @CVS_Extra on Twitter to learn about upcoming promotions and ways to win a variety of gift items through special contests.

By Gary Lee, InReality   As 2014 comes to a close, one thing is clear—traditional retailing is under fire.    Consumers, not brands or retailers, now hold the reigns of power. And, to survive, marketers in brick-and-mortar must take a fresh approach to physical retailing, and carve out a unique value proposition for the in-store experience, one worthy of the consumer’s precious time.  

Montreal, Canada – Specialty childrenswear retailer Souris Mini has selected Raymark's omni-channel customer relationship management (CRM) solution to support strategic initiatives in streamlining marketing activities and improving customer communications. The retailer, with more than 30 locations on two continents, is modernizing the way it engages with customers across all channels, with the project currently underway.   

Seattle - Starbucks Corp. anticipates record purchases of Starbucks gift cards on Dec. 24, citing the trend for customers to push their gift card purchases later and later. In 2013, more than 2 million Starbucks Cards were purchased in the U.S. and Canada on Christmas Eve, representing nearly 1,500 cards purchased per minute.  

Piccing, a “social-shopping” platform, has raised $3.62 million from undisclosed investors, the company announced.

The company’s web and iOS app lets users upload or bookmark images — the latter, Pinterest-style — wherein they can add up to five hotspots tied to items found in each image, thereby helping to make those images “shoppable.”

Users browsing or searching via the platform can click on any image’s hotspots — dubbed “piccs” — to buy the product or see similar items.

Consumers are doing even more holiday shopping from their desktop computers this year, according to a new report from comScore.

The Internet analytics company reports that U.S. consumer spending from desktop computers for the first 44 days of the November-December 2014 holiday shopping season is up 15% from last year, to $42.5 billion.

New York - Edeka, Germany's largest supermarket company, decided to surprise its customers with some unexpected seasonal cheer. Thirteen hidden cameras caught shoppers’ expressions as the store lights went down and cashiers scanned items in such a way that their registers beeped the right notes of holiday favorite "Jingle Bells.” 

TGI Fridays has been getting a lot of attention for its holiday “Mobile Mistletoe” promotion, and not all of it has been for the right reasons. While Mobile Mistletoe is a great concept in omnichannel marketing and customer engagement, some flaws in the actual execution suggest TGI Fridays should have spent more time refining it before launch.  

London, U.K. – Phone calls may seem obsolete in this text- and online-based age, but U.S. consumers are still making the call when they purchase items. According to a new study from call-based marketing automation company ResponseTap, consumers in the U.S. are more than twice as likely to make a phone call when making a purchase, as opposed to purely transacting online.