Digital Marketing

It’s a commonly held belief among retailers that their most valuable customer is the one that is a brand advocate, has the loyalty card, and makes purchases on a regular basis. But there is a problem with that assumption.

While the patterns of behavior from your most loyal customer can show you what is working, they can’t tell you anything about what isn’t working -- or how to fix it. In truth, a retailer’s most valuable customer is the one that comes into your store, browses, but then leaves before buying.

Hoffman Estates, Ill. – Sears Hometown & Outlet Stores Inc. posted declining profits and revenues in a generally difficult second quarter of fiscal 2015.

The retailer plans to close 40-50 underperforming stores by the end of the year, on top of 63 underperforming locations closed in the first half of 2015.

The new Star Wars film awoke a promotional force of epic proportions over the weekend, but now retailers are faced with daunting task of driving sales of merchandise tied to a movie that won’t hit theaters for more than three months.

More than 3,000 retail locations in the U.S. opened at midnight on Friday to unveil aisles of new merchandise tied to the upcoming “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” film, according to Disney Consumer Products and Interactive Media.

Philadelphia – Marketers are largely not conscious of the full potential social images (such as Instagram posts) hold for their email marketing efforts.

According to new research from Curalate and Movable Ink, while 76% of marketer emails include social media buttons, only 14% include social images.

Back in September 2013, I wrote a TechBytes column about how millennials aren’t that different from prior young generations in their interests and needs. I have since realized there are a few unique millennial social trends which reflect specific generational consumer attributes. Using leading-edge technology, retailers can effectively meet the generational needs of this increasingly important customer demographic.

Rock is Dead

PetSmart is throwing a celebration at its stores that aims to appeal to pet owners and people who want to be pet owners.

For the first time, PetSmart will throw a “Happy Gotcha Day” celebration to help find homes for about 15,000 homeless pets during the next PetSmart Charities National Adoption Weekend, Sept. 11-13, when more than 1,400 PetSmart stores will host the event in the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico. The thousands of pets with unknown birthdays that are expected to be adopted will now have a day to call their own.

I know what you’re thinking … another article about programmatic. But given the rapid pace of advancements in the programmatic space, we’ve entered a time when advertisers and retailers are forced to reexamine their strategy, take a closer look at what programmatic means to their business, and prioritize the pieces of the puzzle they should be employing to reap the greatest benefits.

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