eTail will include immersive retail pop-up shopping experiences for the first time.
Kristin Schoenstein has been promoted to eTail Chief of Staff, and Elizabeth Robillard has been promoted to eTail Portfolio Director.
Generative AI has proven to be one of the most versatile technologies for retail brands. Still, it can be difficult to identify what use cases are practical and cost-effective. In this article, we’ll explore some of the practical use cases of generative AI in retail, including an enlightening example from the shoe brand, Crocs, Inc.
Brands are facing a rapidly changing retail and eCommerce landscape, and only those that stay agile will be able to thrive. In this article, you’ll learn how flexibility, technology, and customer-centricity can help you stay on top.
Today’s consumers keep sustainability in mind while they shop, so much so that they are fueling a growing resale market. The circular economy is here, and brands have an opportunity to become an important part of it. This article will explore how brands can start their own resale programs. As an example, you’ll learn about Cotopaxi’s innovative Más Vida resale program.
Partnerships between brands can unlock new avenues for growth and innovation, but only if they’re implemented carefully and deliberately. This article explores how emerging brands can use partnerships to scale, using the synergy between feminine hygiene brands Sequel and August as a positive example.
Email marketing has long been one of the most effective strategies for consumer and retail brands to drive business. However, consumers are bombarded with hundreds of emails every day, so it can be difficult to stand out in the inbox. This article explores how brands can build better email marketing campaigns, using Supergoop!'s educational approach to email marketing as a great example.
Consumers are becoming less loyal to brands and the old rulebook on loyalty programs is no longer effective. Here, we'll explore how brands can revamp their loyalty programs through community-building a recognizing common interest among their customers.
Emerging brands often rely on venture funding to grow quickly and scale their operations, but it can take a long time before they are profitable. Furthermore, investors inevitably have a say in how the company operates. In this article, you'll learn about how Whisker reached its growth potential independently.
Customers expect more than ever from brands' digital experiences. Not only do they expect brands to recognize them across channels, but they also expect seamless online shopping and innovative events that will keep them coming back. In this article, we'll explore how brands can build a best-in-class digital experience in today's market. We'll also focus on an example by shoe brand Clarks.
Brands have an opportunity to enhance the omnichannel customer experience by integrating new technologies and bridging the gap between physical and digital. Any digital transformation effort like this can be challenging, but Lowe's offers some insight into how best to orchestrate it. This article explores what brands can learn from Lowe's digital customer experience journey.
It can be challenging to break into a new market, especially an established market like the pet industry. This article explores how startup brand Yummers used smart partnerships, product innovation, and passion to make its mark on the pet food market.
Unlock unparalleled opportunities and drive exceptional ROI by targeting the top 11 US-based retail e-commerce events and discovering where your brand needs to be. This year stands out with an array of prestigious events, each presenting unique opportunities for vendors to showcase their innovations to the right audience. Here's your comprehensive guide to the top 11 must-attend US-based retail e-commerce events, specifically curated for vendors keen on making informed decisions about where to invest their sponsorship efforts.
With operating costs spiraling and the rampaging cost of living crisis, marketers in the ecommerce space are constantly under pressure to achieve more with less. This means determining where the greatest ROI can be gained when assigning marketing priorities. In this piece we analyze the ROI difference between acquiring new customers and retaining existing ones against the backdrop of the current economic climate.
It’s fair to say 2022 was a disappointing year for online titan Amazon as changing leadership, falling sales, and a difficult time attracting younger customers have all conspired to make the ground on which the king on commerce stands significantly shakier than it once was. In this article we discuss the reasons for Amazon’s 2022 struggles and see what lessons other players in the ecommerce space can learn from its woes.
The COVID-19 pandemic caused serious seismic shifts to the way customers engage with both physical and digital retail. During the worst days of the crisis millions flocked to ecommerce and, now the worst of the danger has passed, we are witnessing a high street resurgence. In this post, we discuss what these changes and others mean for the blending of physical and digital retail experiences and ask whether omnichannel is still fit for purpose in 2023.
The modern retail customer is driven by convenience. Thanks to platforms such as Netflix, Uber Eats, and Amazon, customers today are used to being able to access the products or services they need with a minimum of fuss and bother. In this article, we delve into the topic of convenient commerce – the numbers driving the trend and how you can make sure your retail experience isn’t placing unnecessary barriers in front of potential customers.
As a big box retailer a huge portion of Costco’s success can be found in its ability to offer customers great value and a membership program which keeps them coming back time and time again. However, we feel there is more to the picture than just these two factors alone. In this piece, we discuss how, aside from the factors mentioned above, it is Costco’s commitment to people and planet which earns it the kind of customer loyalty other retailers only dream of.
The retail industry has certainly faced its fair share of headwinds over the last few years and it doesn’t look like 2023 will be the year the pressure lets up. As the industry continues to recover from COVID and adapt to developing situations, we are seeing several key trends emerge. In this article we delve into five of the biggest trends shaping the retail experience in 2023 and suggest how brands in the space might best respond to them.
As the environment – both in terms of the law and public opinion – around data privacy becomes ever more restrictive, ecommerce brands are having to reconsider how they deliver personalized experience. This will become even more challenging when Google finally does away with third party cookies in 2024. In this article, we make the case for a return to tradition and ask whether you actually need reems of digital data to make personalized experiences which resonate with your audience?
When we look at China, we can see that social commerce has been a big deal for some time now. However, the practice has been slower to take hold here in the west. In 2023 we can expect to see social selling rise to become the dominant force in the world of online retail. In this article, we discuss the rise of social commerce and why your ecommerce brand should be engaging with this lucrative channel in 2023 and beyond.
As the desire for home delivery of groceries and household items increases, brands with pre-existing store networks are finding they can leverage their physical locations as distribution centers and enjoy significant savings when it comes to facilitating ecommerce orders. In this article, we discover how Target is putting stores at the heart of its own ecommerce strategy and seeing fantastic results.
Online marketplaces have been seeing enormous success in recent years due to their ability to provide smaller retailers and producers with a means of selling online without much of the cost and effort associated with setting up an ecommerce platform. In this article, we discover how Walgreens Boots Alliance is getting into the marketplace business with its upcoming Boots Marketplace platform.
If you’ve been following the latest reports from the world of B2B buying and selling, you’ll be more than aware that commercial buyers are demanding experiences which more closely resemble B2C interactions than traditional B2B ones. In this post, we check out the newly announced Walmart Business ecommerce portal and discover how it’s bringing a B2C mindset to Walmart’s B2B experience.
As multiple global crises continue to place immense pressure on our ability to effectively move products around the world, modern technological solutions are required to meet these challenges head on and ensure business continuity. In today’s article, we discover how furniture retailer, Wayfair, is making sure its supply chain is optimized for the challenges of the day and it can continue to provide customers with the kind of experiences they expect.
Customer experience and technology go together like peaches and cream, with people naturally drawn towards brands which can offer tech driven features which make shopping a far simpler and more secure journey.
Personalization is a key component of any modern ecommerce strategy and is going to continue to grow in relevance as we move through 2022 and beyond. Many customers today expect brands to tailor marketing and product recommendations to their personal browsing and previous shopping habits and we know from a growing body of research that those people are happy for companies to gather their data.
The world of digital marketing is transforming, and brands need to manage this period of change or risk seeing costs spiral – especially those associated with acquiring new customers. With the world’s most popular search engine brand no longer facilitating this kind of data, ecommerce brands are going to need to get creative to attract new customers and control costs.
Retailers of sporting goods have had somewhat of a mixed bag of fortunes during the global COVID-19 crisis. However, now we are starting to emerge from the worst days of the pandemic, sporting goods retailers are searching for ways to bring people back out into the sunshine and start enjoying some of America’s favorite pastimes once again.
Ecommerce retailers looking to make a name for themselves often go down several different avenues and try a range of channels through which they can get their brand noticed in the increasingly crowded online shopping space.
As eCommerce becomes an ever more potent force in the world of retail, brands the world over are searching for ways to make their online presence more powerful and draw increasing numbers of customer into the fold. Clothing probably didn’t fit into this pattern particularly well – although loungewear producers and retailers likely made out like bandits – but now we are all venturing outside once again, fashion is definitely back on the menu.
The world of retail is transforming before our eyes, of that there can be little doubt, and brands in the ecommerce space are finding themselves having to think outside of increasingly challenging boxes to make sure they nurture and retain their audiences.
When an ecommerce brand is well known for the history of the person or persons who started it, it can be difficult to maintain the right balance. This can often be the case for those entrepreneurs who come from a family which is already home to a famous brand. Those brands need to make sure they pay homage to their legacy, while simultaneously announcing their independence as an ecommerce force to be reckoned with in their own right.
Ecommerce is a powerful force in the world of retail, and few would deny that online is the direction in which the industry as a whole is shifting. This is more than evident in the latest figures from comfortable and casual footwear brand, Crocs which has posted impressive sales figures, boosted by its investment in social media and ecommerce.
The modern customer want options and they want those options to put as few barriers between them and making a purchase as possible. Ecommerce brands need to go back to the drawing board when it comes to their entire shopping experience.
It seems like every day a new brand enters the ecommerce arena, often in direct competition with those who went before. However, competition also fosters innovation and brands will often do their best work when they know they have to stand out in a crowded marketplace.
Customer experience is king! We hear this refrain time and time again in the world of digital marketing – and specifically when marketing more the online retail business – but what does it actually mean?
Packing up your wares and trekking across the country is no mean feat and you need to be confident that the event you’re going too is best placed to expose your brand to a new audience of potential customers. Footfall is only part of the story – you need to know the people those feet belong to are engaged, looking for innovative solutions, and have the ability to make or influence decision making.
There are so many great ecommerce events around, it can be hard to know where to start. Having an easy resource for all the events in the calendar can be incredibly valuable, which is why we’ve compiled this convenient list of all the top US-based ecommerce events happening throughout 2022.
Relationships between retailers and their customers have almost always been transactional. Customers expect to be able to buy the products they want for a reasonable price and to receive kind and helpful service during the process. While nothing about this relationship is likely to go away, brands are also discovering that many of the loyalty programs they've championed in the past don't always result in true customer loyalty at all.
Retail consumers' shift from in-person to digital shopping channels in 2020 and 2021 has perhaps been the most significant trend shaping retailers' strategies in recent months. But this shift was also driven by a trend that has been years in the making: the rise of the channel-agnostic retail customer.
Mobile commerce is redefining retail. As mobile adoption increases and the arrival of 5G is imminent, retailers must transform how they approach mobile consumer engagement.
As a major provider of supplements and other health products, The Vitamin Shoppe has always had a firm focus on keeping its customers fit and well. Now, in the time of the coronavirus, that mission has taken on even greater importance for the brand.
In this chapter of the eTail Boston keynote series, Chico's Senior Marketing VP, Shelagh Stoneham introduces six key digital strategies for retailers.
In this chapter of the eTail Boston keynote series, Teleflora's Senior Director of eCommerce Marketing, David Lorango shares his strategies on text engagement.
In this chapter of the eTail Boston keynote series, executives from IKEA, Wearit, Shoptype, and Logicbroker discuss how retailers can enable connected commerce.
In this chapter of the eTail Boston keynote series, J Jill Inc.'s Brian Beitler shares his formula for successful digital marketing for retailers.
As shoppers are spending more outside of traditional Q4 holidays, retailers must come up with new seasonal sales strategies to capitalize on this new trend.
One of the first beauty brands to acknowledge the crisis on social, Wander Beauty should be proud for how they used the platform to prioritize people over profits.
Brands the world over are discovering that to succeed at ecommerce — or any form of commerce — one needs to find ways to connect with one's audience.
Does Etsy need to choose between having values or providing shareholder value?
By embracing its kooky nature and actively seeking partnerships with celebrities and brands which fit with their style, Crocs has been winning left and right.
Personalization is going to continue to be incredibly important for Walgreens and customers will soon expect these kinds of experiences from all retail brands.
Data, AI, and augmented reality are powerful tools in the eCommerce playbook. It’s great to see brands such as Wayfair utilizing them to such great effect.
For Staples it all starts with the support network
As one of the nation’s most recognizable brands, The Home Depot has been investing heavily in omnichannel experiences and is now starting to see the results.
For Burt's Bees, it all started with an imaginative partnership with the most recognizable nature photography brand in the world
Butcher Box has been making serious waves in the subscription business and has also been devoting itself to fighting fraud in the sector.
While a 100% remote business model might not seem like the best fit for a retail brand, Tortuga makes it work to its advantage with a solid strategy.
Rent the Runway has figured out how to do some good while remaining attractive to the lucrative millennial demographic
Walmart has also developed strategic partnerships with technology powerhouses such as Google and Microsoft, which allow it to bring its products to Google Express and sell them through voice search with Google Home and other applications.
What about Google Shopping has positioned the search giant to challenge Amazon for the eCommerce crown?
In this exclusive 2020 eTail report, we uncover the key steps that leading retailers prioritize to build a more customer-centric supply chain.
Innovations in cross-channel campaign management (CCCM) are transforming marketing strategies for retailers, helping them “better understand their customers, execute brand strategies across channels, and orchestrate offline customer experiences,” Forrester reports. But central to those strategies is a more profound, individualized understanding of customers most retailers are yet to achieve.
For Le Tote, servicing customers with extreme personalization has led to retention rates of 94% and year-over-year growth of 500%.
This report features key insights and data from 167 retailers as they prepare for Q4 2018. We’ve tapped leaders from the best brands in the business—Ralph Lauren, Best Buy, ACE Hardware, and more— for their insights on the most important new approaches for holiday retail success.
Amazon has been able to drive more sales with social media than any other online merchant. Here's how it's done.
A small business can often find it hard to know which way to turn when looking for advice on how to make the most of its market. However, with a suite of online resources, Vistaprint is making sure it's on-hand for more than just business cards.
Nationwide school districts have found a growing need to remove several barriers to learning for K-12 students, and Scholastic is teaming up with the National Dropout Prevention Center in an attempt to achieve just that.
One may assume the television shopping industry would be losing ground to online platforms such as eBay. However, with its new program idea, Evine Live Inc. is putting innovative ideas in the spotlight.
Teaming up with established and well-known brands can provide a great route for an innovative startup to get its message out there, and Framebridge's partnership with Target is helping the company continue its upwards trajectory.
Moving an online business from the digital space into the brick and mortar arena can make for a bit of a culture shock. However, with a great marketing strategy, Sugarfina has made the transition as sweet as possible.
Fans of eBook reader services can often lament the fact that there's no way to connect their electronic books to their collections of physical page-turners. However, with its latest acquisition, Rakuten Kobo is helping its customers achieve just that.
In combining its online ordering service with the powerful technology and market penetration Facebook Messenger enjoys, Subway is making sure as many of its customers as possible can savor their favorite sandwiches in a more convenient manner.
Artificial intelligence innovation is at the forefront of the modern technology-focused company, and Wayfair's Chief Architect is excited about how it's propelling the business forward.
The flagship store in New York’s SoHo neighborhood has been designed to give M.Gemi customers a whole new experience on their path to purchase.
Some retailers are hedging their bets that VR is simply bound to take off, and are experimenting with the technology now before it becomes mainstream.
One department store that’s carrying the flame for the omnichannel customer is Macy's.
Here's how Target's ecommerce order fulfillment strategy is making waves.
Rite Aid has created a balance between simply selling more products and improving the whole in-store shopping experience
The 16th edition of Bain & Company's 'Luxury Goods Worldwide Market Study' found that the global luxury market is estimated to have grown to almost EUR1.2 trillion (USD 1.4 trillion) in 2017 - a 5% increase over the previous year. This is promising news for the luxury industry - let's take a look at five key trends that are shaping the market.
What makes a brand a "luxury" brand? Is it the quality of the materials? The design? The price tag? Yes, yes, and yes - but if these were the only criteria, everything from smartphones to well-made running shoes would be considered luxury items.
With the right know-how and tools, retailers can come up with new and innovative ways to keep shoppers coming back for more
Can XOJET transform the private charter flight industry to create an "Uber for the airways"?
Luxury Shoppers are moving online to fulfill their shopping needs, and in response, the market is gradually trying to adapt.
Examples of truly great omnichannel moments for customers are not as prevalent as you might think.
Rather than being simply a gimmick, the practically peerless in-store experience provided by PIRCH has actually been created with pragmatism.
The key factors that your web-only business should take into consideration prior to launching physical locations of your own.
ThredUp is creating a real network of data and people around its recommerce strategy. This is helping it to not only promote the brand and make its products attractive.
TripAdvisor now wants to rebrand as a social media platform and offer its visitors a range of new features, including friend-adding, targeted content, videos, photos, and articles, as well as recommendations and guides from friends and family.
Department store Macy's isn't just banking on one ecommerce innovation to compete with Amazon, but is adopting a more comprehensive omnichannel approach.
Reebok's digital marketing has focused on the sport aspect of its offering - hammering home messages about toughness, determination, and discipline. However, this approach hasn't been resonating with the brand's younger audiences, and so a change of tact was required.
Brands can learn a lot from The Honest Company when it comes to creating an identity aligned with responsibility and ethical behavior. As time goes on, the need for brands to be seen this way will become even keener and those who get out in front of it will have the best chance of success.
Being a brand born of the ecommerce age, Casper has long had its finger on the pulse of digital marketing, but most impressive of all is its innovative content strategy.
Many contemporary ecommerce brands may turn their noses up at direct mail and disregard it in favor of more up-to-date marketing methods. However, some brands are still recognizing the power of this kind of marketing, and some are even espousing them over digital methods.
Farfetch, the London-headquartered online luxury fashion retail platform, is on a mission to become the leading luxury ecommerce company in China. With the Chinese market growing at an unprecedented rate in recent decades, global brands have quickly realized the importance of developing a comprehensive China strategy.
The launch of the newly designed site is part of the retailer's larger aim to provide a digital experience in line with the direct-to-customer element of the business.
The mixed reality Wayfair Spaces app helps to take lot of the guesswork out of furniture buying and gives consumers the confidence they need to make better purchasing decisions.
As strategies go, you don’t get much more (ahem) targeted than Target's omnichannel two-app tactic
Here’s how you can drive action from your customers and better achieve measurable results through your mobile marketing efforts.
The Walgreens omnichannel approach is quite clearly at the very top of its game.
Let’s take a closer look at the evolution of CVS mobile customer solutions.
Focusing on the customer experience, Best Buy was able to grow its domestic online revenue by 13% overall.
Home Depot has restructured its whole supply network in order to integrate the experiences of in-store and online commerce.
From Scan and Go to endless aisles, to the revamped Club Pick-Up, Sam’s Club is working hard at the customer experience across all touchpoints.
This highly-personalized business model has some highly-powered technology behind it.
A weapon in Kroger’s expanding arsenal is the company’s customer analytics and insight division – named 84.51°
Starbucks has considered the desires of their customers by researching their buying habits and developing a strategy to cater to their customer’s wants and needs.
The luxury industry is facing many unique challenges in the digital age. As millennials move into their prime earning years, they form the generation that will contribute the most (130%) to the luxury market's growth over the next six years. Appealing to this increasingly important cohort requires a big rethink of traditional marketing strategies.
As tech-savvy millennials are accounting for more and more luxury sales, investing in technology and digital customer experiences is just as important for luxury brands as it is anyone else. You know this - but how do you go about convincing your leadership that digital transformation is worthy of investment?
When it comes to digital marketing – and indeed to Tiffany’s business model – it’s engagement that counts.
Cosabella's new emails strategy has shown incredible result implementing AI to send customized emails.
eTail is partnering with the WBR Insights research team for a closer look at how international retailers are facing down these challenges. In our upcoming Cross-Border Commerce 2020 report, we study how retailers are improving international eCommerce in the face of four major challenges—fulfillment, payments, fraud, and email marketing.
The immediate implications for the grocery industry are huge – and there’s more than a whiff of fear coming from retailers.
In this chapter of the eTail West keynote series, Alan Wizemann, CDO of Dollar Shave Club, draws on his experience with three major retailers – Target, Lululemon Athletica, and DSC – to discuss how retailers can solve customer problems with solutions that promote both brand engagement and technology adoption.
In this chapter of the eTail West keynote series: Igor Cherny, Home Depot's VP of Online, Marketing, & Merchandising Technology discusses various issues and challenges that Home Depot has faced in recent years, and the innovative actions the company has taken to address them.
In this chapter of the eTail West keynote series, a panel of retail industry experts from Dollar Shave Club, LVMH, Boot Barn, and BazaarVoice share their views on how to humanize your brand - and how to make that humanization a sustainable part of corporate culture
In this chapter of the eTail West keynote series: Michelle Farabaugh, Harry & David's CMO, emphasizes the importance of sharing your brand experience - not just in a social media sense, but more broadly, and at a more personal level.
CarMax is revolutionizing the industry yet again and is blazing ahead with a bold new omnichannel strategy that empowers customers to buy cars and trucks on their terms.
The mixed reality Wayfair Spaces app helps to take lot of the guesswork out of furniture buying and gives consumers the confidence they need to make better purchasing decisions.
A small business can often find it hard to know which way to turn when looking for advice on how to make the most of its market. However, with a suite of online resources, Vistaprint is making sure it's on-hand for more than just business cards.
Artificial intelligence innovation is at the forefront of the modern technology-focused company, and Wayfair's Chief Architect is excited about how it's propelling the business forward.
Ultimately, the new VR training initiative from Walmart Academy is all about driving customer experience.
Remaining relevant is more than simply maintaining a presence and an extensive product inventory.
There is some great technology at play on 1800flowers.com that streamlines the experience for customers and artificial intelligence is leading the way.
Panera Bread’s transformation from a restaurant-only chain into a digitally-powered omnichannel business is what’s putting the company on such a strong growth trajectory.
David's Bridal has seen incredible organic engagement since the Pinterest campaign kicked off.
Mobile-to-store ordering is just the first step of a larger strategy to improve the brand’s online-offline selling capabilities.
As shoppers are spending more outside of traditional Q4 holidays, retailers must come up with new seasonal sales strategies to capitalize on this new trend.
In this 2020 report, we explore how retailers not only survive but thrive in this new, search and marketplace-driven retail environment.
In 2019, retailers will transform customer engagement into a holistic user experience, implementing not just the latest technologies but adopting new and novel ways to showcase their products and individualize their brands.