Digital Marketing

If you’re like me, and you were curious about how Black Friday hype translated into retail sales, your head is spinning right about now. Because the flurry of post-Black Friday news reports is packed with conflicting information, data that doesn’t seem to add up, and—perhaps unsurprisingly given those disparities—wildly variant conclusions about whether the Black Friday weekend was a “success” or a “disappointment” and about what is in store for the rest of the holiday season.

By Alex Romanov, iSign Media   The holiday season is a time of family, food, and frenzied shopping. Consumers are bombarded by messages, promotions, discounts, and offers, and retailers have to be smart about how they reach out to their customers. Email blasts or paper coupons just won’t cut it. In this mobile-obsessed era, proximity marketing is a powerful way to break through the noise and bring shoppers into your store.   

New York - In an abrupt move, Michael Jefferies, the longtime and often controversial chief of Abercrombie & Fitch, has retired as CEO and stepped down from the company’s board, effective immediately. His retirement caught the industry by surprise, particularly since it comes in the middle of the crucial holiday selling season.    

Surrey, Canada - Guildford Town Centre, a shopping center in Surrey, British Columbia, Canada, is reaching out to customers across multiple channels and points of engagement. The center retained 3 Tier Logic, a wholly-owned subsidiary of 3TL Technologies, to use its Platform3 technologies to drive consumer foot traffic, gather in-depth data about shoppers, and increase social media engagement.  

Cincinnati - Phillips Edison & Company announced a partnership with the LOC Card, a consumer engagement platform from LOC Enterprises which allows customers to participate in merchants’ loyalty programs and access their data and information from each program all in one place.    

Eighties sensation Weird Al Yankovic is offering RadioShack a new hope for the holidays.

Yankovic is appearing in the chain's holiday ad campaign called "Gift Smart.” In the ad, he sings his own unique take on the holiday song “Toyland.”

"He's tech-savvy, smart and a social media guru," said RadioShack chief marketing officer Jennifer Warren. Yankovich has more than 3.5 million Twitter followers and 1.6 million Facebook fans. "I don't think there could be a better fit for our brand right now."

A new report looking at consumer shopping habits on mobile phones shows that Sunday is the best day of the week when it comes to sales from mobile shoppers.

"Online shopping has become a major force in global markets. And, with the holiday shopping season upon us in the United States, we see mobile's share of that market accelerating," said Larry Moores, vice president for consumer mobile reporting and analytics at Opera Software, a leading mobile internet and advertising company.

Social media is front and center at Jo-Ann Fabric and Craft Stores this holiday season with the retailer tapping into customers’ desire to share with the introduction of the Holiday Hub.

As holiday shoppers hunted for online deals Thanksgiving weekend the Overstock.com Web site provided fertile hunting grounds.

The retailer said its sales between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday increased 23 percent compared to the same period the prior year. In addition to new customers, the increase was driven by an 8 percent increase in average individual order size. Cyber Monday sales increased 24 percent while Thanksgiving day saw the largest gain, up 38 percent off of a smaller initial base than Cyber Monday.

  San Francisco – Although email is at the point it’s often considered a “legacy” technology, a slight majority of consumers still prefer it for holiday communication from retailers. According to a new consumer survey from Salesforce, 53% of respondents said that email is their preferred communication channel during the holidays.