Mobile Marketing

Many kids are just starting their summer vacations, but back-to-school shopping is well underway.  

Retail tenants are not only reporting a strong performance for  the year so far, but are also optimistic about the next six months.  

Retailers often treat millennials like some sort of marketing Holy Grail, but there may be some simple ways to boost revenues from this emerging consumer generation.

According to a new study from online marketing platform provider Cue Commerce, “Consumer Moments of Truth,” the 80-plus-million shoppers who are part of the millennial generation can be categorized into the following five broad shopping personas.

Marc’s, a 58-store deep-discounter of grocery, health and beauty products and other items, is providing targeted recommendations with help from national partners.   The Cleveland-based retailer is teaming up with Allrecipes to introduce in-store beacon-triggered experiences that provide shoppers with personalized meal recommendations through the Allrecipes Dinner Spinner app. In-store notifications are triggered on shoppers’ smartphones by a Verifone beacon system running on the Footmarks SmartConnect proximity platform.

The launch of “buy buttons” in the past year on major social networks like Pinterest, Instagram, and Twitter received a lot of attention, but so far they are not catching on with customers.
 
According to Digiday, research firms including Forrester and GlobalWebIndex are finding low consumer usage rates for social buy buttons. Reasons include limited functionality and visibility of the buttons.

When it comes to marketing, retailers should adopt a truly “omnichannel” approach.

According to a new consumer survey from digital marketing firm Fluent, “The Omnichannel Advantage,” consumers who are reached through a greater number of channels make in-store and online purchases from their favorite retailers more frequently.

Purchases from mobile devices continue to rise and upping ad spend is driving results for retailers.

According to data from Rakuten Marketing., purchases from smartphones that originated from a display ad on a computer increased by 52% between the third and fourth quarter of 2015. During that time tablet purchases that resulted from a display ad on a computer grew by 125%.

It may seem a little premature given that school is still in session, but the first back-to-school study has been released.

About 62% of households plan to reduce back-to- school spending compared to 2015, according to a survey by Bizrate Insights, a division of Connexity. Average spend will be $606, or $1,086 for households with college-age children.

The world’s largest social media network showed its chops in the first quarter, reporting impressive increases in revenue, earnings and users that shattered analysts’ expectations.

Facebook reported $2.2 billion in profit for the quarter, ended March 31, up from $1.8 billion in the year-ago period. Revenue totaled $5.38 billion, up 52% over the year ago period.