Email, Search and Direct Mail Outperforming Daily Deal Sites and Social

In many ways 2011 was the “year of Groupon.” There was a tremendous amount of buzz around sites offering daily and flash deals, and new sites popped up overnight to compete, with the year culminating in Groupon’s controversial IPO. Blogs like LiveOffGroupon.com even chronicled shoppers living only on daily deals. Suddenly, it seemed that these [...]

January Personalization Roundup

The Personalization Roundup is an ongoing blog series featuring the most evocative news, articles and blogs curated by Baynote each month highlighting the rapidly growing topic of web personalization. For this month’s roundup, we’ve combed the web to once again bring you the latest and greatest on the personalization revolution.

January kicked off with a bang as we said ‘goodbye’ to 2011 and ‘hello’ to 2012 and a fresh set of resolutions. Retailers took a hard look at their failures and successes over the last 12 months and began setting new benchmarks for performance across their channels. With a record-breaking holiday shopping season behind us, now is the time for retailers to take action and ensure their online storefronts are up to snuff. Read on to find out how personalization is positioning brands for success and sparking innovation and disruption in the New Year: (more…)

Email and Search in a Buyer’s Dream

All channels considered, email and search are the two most widely ones used on the web. They are also two of the most heavily spammed. And for many retailers, some of the most misunderstood. (See our most recent cartoon: Email Offer)  As you may know, over the holidays we conducted a shopping survey* to find out how customers felt about the online shopping experience. Here are a few best practices to incorporate into your customer channels. (more…)

Social Commerce Disappoints This Holiday Shopping Season, But Still Shows Promise

On the one hand, Baynote’s recent Holiday Shopping Experience Survey showed that 80 percent of consumers were not influenced by social networks over the holidays. On the other hand, 20 percent reported purchasing a product on a retail website after receiving a special offer or promotion on Facebook. While these numbers certainly didn’t live up [...]

The State of Mobile Phone vs. Tablet Shopping

If you’ve joined us lately, you are aware that we’re running a series of blogs on our annual holiday shopping survey*. As the highest ranking year yet for online sales with over 35 billion in revenue, it’s understandable retailers are eager to find new ways to enhance the customer experience through technology. Mobile is at the top of many e-commerce executives’ lists. But where and how should they invest? And from a consumer standpoint, who is making the purchase: the on-the-run mobile phone shopper or the couch-surfing tablet enthusiast? (more…)

The Future of M-commerce = The Tablet

As I mentioned in my last post introducing our 2nd Annual Holiday Online Shopping Experience Survey, we are doing a series of more detailed blogs on some of the study’s major themes.

First up: tablets.

When we received the initial results, one of the very first things that popped out at us was how many tablet owners bought products with their devices this year. Not just researched with, but actually purchased.

(more…)

Intent to Buy Cartoon #5: Email Offer

This is the fifth in Baynote’s ten-part series of cartoons by award-winning cartoonist Tom Fishburne, titled “Intent to Buy”. We’ve received some great feedback from you on our cartoons, so please continue to let us know what you think! To say thanks for your input, we’ll send you a print signed by [...]

We Took a Giant Bite of the Big Apple; Day Two Highlights from NRF 2012

It’s the second and final day of NRF’s Big Show in New York City and industry experts are spending much of the day looking into their crystal balls and talking about the future, with today’s docket including sessions like “What the Next Five Years of Retail Will be About” and “Retail 2020″. Here are some of today’s highlights:

Keeping up with the Millennials. The next-generation consumer is today’s 15-year-old kid, and their generation will expect the customer experience to be customized based on their history, preferences, social graph, intent and location. As if that weren’t enough, Millennials want to be an active participant in the manipulation of the experience. If they can’t interact with the brand in a customized manner, they’ll discard it and move on to a competitor.

(more…)