Omnichannel

Delia’s is still in the early stages of its turnaround efforts, but losses in the fourth quarter prompted the multichannel retailer that caters to teenage girls to offer preliminary results.

The company said that headwinds which continue to pressure the retail industry hampered its progress in the quarter.

Omnichannel marketers have gained a new personalization weapon to engage with shoppers thanks to a partnership between nGage Labs and Web Decisions.

The firms announced a new arrangement that combines nGage’s personalized mobile customer engagement capabilities with Web Decision’s omnichannel marketing database solutions to create a fully integrated database-drive mobile customer engagement solution.

New York – Consumers are increasingly performing omni-channel shopping, and prefer personalized offers across the different channels they shop. According to a new survey of more than 1,000 online consumers from retail personalization technology vendor Synqera, U.S. consumers still prefer promotional content and coupons from traditional print media (magazine, newsletter/flyer, newspaper) (75%), found online (72%), or received after a purchase (62%) for future shopping.

White Plains, N.Y. — Overall online shopping rose 8% during the week before Valentine's Day compared to the same period in 2013. Growth was particularly strong in the categories of gifts (up 20%), apparel (up 17%) and health and beauty (up 15%), and department stores (34%) compared to the previous year.

New York — Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten Inc. will buy messaging app provider Viber Media Inc. for $900 million. Rakuten, which is also a major investor in Pinterest and owner of U.S. online retailer Play.com, seeks to use Viber as a platform for both mobile shopping and content consumption, according to the Associated Press.

Rakuten offers services from financing to shopping to online video on its e-commerce platform, the largest in Japan.

Dallas — Zuri Furniture has deployed Yottaa Engagement Cloud to optimize user engagement and business performance. To scale online operations in the U.S. and Canada, Zuri sought a solution that could offer immediate results in improved conversions and revenue.

Seattle — Pinterest will emerge as a stronger alternative to Facebook and Twitter, according to global research and analytics firm Blueocean Market Intelligence. The company analyzed the online data of the nation’s top 100 retailers from September through December 2013 as part of its on-going study assessing the business impact of top retailers’ social media efforts.

Based on the analysis, Blueocean Market Intelligence predicts the following top social media trends for the retail industry in 2014:

Rakuten has acquired Viber, a pioneering messaging and VoIP company, for $900 million.

Viber has a global user base of 300 million registered users. The acquisition will enable Rakuten to penetrate new markets with multiple digital content offerings, in combination with its e-commerce and financial services platforms.