Marketing Tactics

The world’s largest social network is testing new e-commerce eatures, including a dedicated shopping section, Re/code reported. Facebook’s push comes as other social sites, including Twitter, are exploring social shopping.

The retail revolution may not be televised, but it will be digitized.

The new Q3 E-commerce Pulse from predictive analytics platform provider Custora shows that e-commerce revenue grew a healthy 11.8% year-over-year in third quarter 2015. E-commerce transactions rose an almost identical 11.6%.

Mobile continued to grow in significance as a channel for e-commerce in the quarter. Phones and tablets made up a combined 28.7% of e-commerce transactions, up from 23.1% of orders during the same time the prior year.

Twenty-three year SPECS attendee Randy Pannell, VP of construction for Saks Fifth Avenue, shares his thoughts on SPECS, Chain Store Age’s annual store planning/construction and facilities conference, which will be held March 13-15, 2016, in Dallas. For more on the event, click here.

Why do you attend SPECS each year?
To be honest, in the early years, SPECS was really just a trade show to me. But I soon realized that it was more than that. It really worked!

Placing ads in tweets just got easier and more precise for retailers.

Retailers constantly experiment to serve customer needs in new ways and HSN has taken that concept to a new level with an initiative involving Ford.
 
Through the end of October, HSN and Ford Motor Company are offering a “preferred price event” based on the core value proposition of a prenegotiated price on a wide range of the automaker’s models.
 

Brick-and-mortar sales metrics were below expectations in September, but not all was lost.

According to the September 2015 Retail Performance Pulse report from brick-and-mortar analytics firm RetailNext Inc., traffic declined at the lowest rate since January of this year.

Shoppers are starting their holiday shopping earlier every year — and it's partially due to a perception that the deals aren't all that great anymore on Black Friday.

According to RetailMeNot’s annual holiday Shoppers Trend Report, only 10% of consumers believe that it is worth waiting until Black Friday for deals.

The “paint ‘n’ sip” phenomenon, whereby friends, neighbors, and colleagues come together to paint, drink and relax, is showing no signs of slowing down and that’s good news for a Louisiana-based company.

Painting with a Twist, which bills itself as the original and largest paint-and-sip franchise, has opened more than one new location each week this year, and is on track to reach its goal of 100 new locations in 2015.