Marketing Tactics

Select Comfort continues to expand with the opening of its 500th Sleep Number store.

Located in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, the new location features the brand’s latest store design and experience, which is interactive and educational. It’s one of 50 net new stores the retailer plans to open in 2016.

Online specialty luggage retailer eBags is looking to attract “new” shoppers with what has come to be considered an “old” technology platform.

eBags is deploying the Criteo Dynamic Email solution to pair anonymous behavioral data with third-party, permission-based email addresses from Criteo’s publisher network. As a result, the retailer can re-engage consumers it has previously targeted with social media and display advertising, as well as reach new customers who have demonstrated an interest in its brand and/or products.

Personalization, retail bots and social media will play key roles in a new store concept from Kipling North America.

The maker of lightweight luggage and other accessories will unveil its first interactive store format on May 20, at Disney Springs, Walt Disney World Resort, Orlando, Florida.

The new store is designed to offer customers a unique and personalized shopping experience, with array of inventive “activations” offered throughout the space. It will be in the Town Center part of Disney Springs.

Online reviews, for better or worse, are a permanent part of online reputation marketing for most businesses. Retailers, service providers, franchises, law firms and other professionals hang on every star given by customers. But not all online reviews are the same. In a comprehensive dive into the numbers provided by businesses, the following five conclusions were drawn from the data. 1. Star Ratings Are Important to Searchers

The lifestyle retailer named after the famous film festival started by Robert Redford continues to grow its retail footprint and has added a store in the Northwest. The Bridgeport Village shopping center in the Portland, OR., suburb of Tigard is the location of the newest Sundance store which offers women’s and men’s apparel, footwear, jewelrey, accessories, art, and home décor.

While other retailers make news by posting grim first quarter results and closing stores., the nation’s leading off-price retailer is making headlines by doing just the opposite. Amid strong first quarter results that included a 7% rise in same-store sales, TJX Cos. said it plans to open about 150 more stores during the rest of this year, on top of the 47 stores it opened in its first quarter.

Ace Hardware took home "record" first quarter revenues of $1.2 billion in the first quarter, an increase of 4.3% over last year. The message was a little more muddled for earnings. Though its first quarter net income of $26.1 million was down 12.7% year-over-year, that figure was still 12.0% ahead of plan. It was also a planned reduction owing to the timing of promotions.

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%.