Social Media

Sales has come a long way. Gone are the days of door-to-door and the other tired sales methods. And salespeople? They’ve evolved, too.

Training a sales team can be hard — especially when it comes to building a new workforce. You know, those employees whose only door-to-door experience consists of trick-or-treating. Yep, we’re talking about Millennials.

The abandoned shopping cart rate for mobile shoppers approximates an astounding 97%, according to some estimates. Clearly, this hair-raising stat proves consumers’ deep disappointment with mobile commerce.

Most people do not get a paid holiday for “Leap Day,” Feb. 29.

Then again, most people do not work for online footwear and apparel retailer Zappos. Known for doing things a little differently, such as replacing the traditional bureaucratic management structure with decentralized “holacracy,” Zappos is taking a novel approach to Leap Day.

The Home Depot Inc. specializes in letting customers do it themselves, and is now extending that philosophy across all channels.

“We want to provide interconnected retail, and mobile is one area where we are leaning,” Matt Jones, general manager of mobile for Home Depot, said in an interview with Chain Store Age. “We want to help customers solve their problems in a couple of ways.”

According to Jones, today’s consumers are leveraging mobile devices to aid multiple parts of their shopping experience.

One demographic in particular may want to break into a chorus of The Who’s “My Generation” when they use Pinterest.

New data from Pinterest shows that more than one in three of Pinterest’s 100 million global users are Millennials. With 75% of all content saved by Pinterest users coming from businesses, this reflects an opportunity to present brands and products to a Millennial-heavy audience.

Consumers in the U.S. are definitely relying on digital tools to aid their shopping activities.

According to a new study of 2,000 consumers in nine countries including the U.S. from Deloitte, “Navigating the New Digital Divide,” 49% of purchases made in the U.S. are digitally influenced, and 28% are influenced by mobile.

Golf aficionados are notoriously particular about their equipment, and most interested in the recommendations of fellow duffers when making product selections.

Vertical golf retailer TaylorMade is leveraging the Needle Advocate Marketing Cloud to help bring online customers in contact with brand advocates to provide highly targeted content and information. Advocate Marketing Cloud eases the collaboration process for retailers and advocates.

A new collection of five emojis created by Facebook gives users of the social media platform new ways to express themselves that could have huge implications for retailers.