If you don’t mail catalogs, apologies for off-topic post.
If you do mail catalogs:
Is CatalogChoice on your radar?
I think they’re going to be a very big deal this year.
If interested, please check out this post: If Prospecting Was Illegal, Would Your Catalog Survive? .
Comments welcome!
Fellow Shop.org retailers and associate members,
I am writing because it has just come to my attention that there is some confusion surrounding my Paying for Performance conference call. Let me clarify the situation by stating several facts:
1) Neither Vintage Tub nor I get any direct or indirect compensation for this call. I do freely admit, however, that I get a lot of personal pleasure providing useful content to the community that has been so supportive of our business.
2) I asked Jeff Molander – a very knowledgeable person – to help me develop the content for the calls. I told him that although only retailers would be able to listen in on the call, I would allow anyone with relevant and actionable insight to present on the call. Of course, we do not allow anyone to pitch their products or services.
3) Vintage Tub does not charge anyone to speak or participate on the call. Jeff and I bear all the costs.
I sincerely apologize if Jeff or I offended anyone by posting a detailed speaker list for our next call. The post was simply designed to let our members know who the call speakers are and what they have to offer. We will no longer post this kind of information on the Shop.org blog. If you are interested in participating on this call, you can write me privately and I will send you the details.
My goal – whether it is organizing panels for Shop.org conferences, hosting networking dinners at Shop.org events or sponsoring conference calls for Shop.org members – is to get fellow ecommerce managers talking and sharing information with each other. Nothing more – nothing less.
Sincerely,
Allan Dick, Jr.
CMO
Vintage Tub and Bath
There are so many blogs out there, you need to differentiate yours from the others. You need an angle or a “hook” to stand out and attract a loyal subscriber base.
One blog that has such a hook is Design Talk, a blog of helpful home decorating advice and tips do-it-yourself interior decorators, owned by HomeVisions, a DMSI brand. (By way of disclosure, DMSI is a client of ours and we built the blog for them.) DesignTalk’s “hook” is to share a wealth of home decor ideas that would rival any home decorating magazine.
But you can’t stop there. Being helpful is great, but you need to be memorable in terms of personality too. Whether you want your retail blog to be snarky, witty, professorial, egotistical to the point of humorous, self-deprecating, nihilistic, or voyeuristic, a great hook should either be written into every post or presented in such a way that it becomes unique for your brand.
One example of a retail blog that I think really nailed this concept is the Sparkle Like the Stars blog, owned by ice.com. Their blog is snarky, irreverent, fun, voyeuristic, trendy and useful — all at the same time! It’s like a celebrity gossip rag but with fashion advice that the average person can use to recreate a particular movie star’s look.
We at Netconcepts decided to follow in the footsteps of Sparkle Like the Stars to create a blog about celebrity footwear fashion we affectionately named, “The Shoe Paparazzi.” The idea behind it was to fuse a love for shoes with the “sport” of celebrity watching in order to capture and keep readers’ interest. At this point it’s still just an experiment, a pet project of Netconcepts that wasn’t commissioned by a client, but is something we hope can be used in the future to prove the case for the “celebrity watching hook” as a viable angle for online retailers. If you have the chance, I invite you to take a look at our “Shoe Paparazzi” blog experiment and let me know whether or not you think it has what it takes.
What about you? Does your brand / company have a blog, and if so, what’s your hook?
Shop.org held its first international dinners last week in London and Paris. As part of Shop.org’s vision to be the world’s leading membership community for digital retail, the dinners provided an opportunity for British and French retailers to share online and multichannel best practices with US retailers. Representatives from JC Penney and Timberland attended the dinners from the United States.
The London dinner on March 11 featured leading UK retailers including Artigiano, B&Q, Debenhams, Isabella Oliver, Koodos, Littlewoods, QVC UK, The Body Shop and Urban Outfitters UK. Check out the pictures.
The Paris dinner on March 13 featured leading French retailers including 3 suisses, Yves Rocher, Alapage, Auchan, Galeries Lafayette, Kiabi, L’oreal, Morgan, Priceminister, Redcats, eBay, Wengo, CCB Paris and Telemarket.fr. Check out the pictures.
It was a great learning experience.
Navigating through the complexities of cross-border logistics, legal issues, managing multiple currencies and cultural issues is hard. European online retailers, by necessity, are quite experienced in this area. And, as online retailers seek further global expansion into Asia and other markets, those who have mastered cross-border excellence will be at a distinct advantage.
Around the world, online shoppers’ expectations continue to rise - from tracking packages to returning items to the store that were purchased online to seeing shipping charges before checkout. US retailers, who operate in a more mature market place, have had more time to implement and fine-tune these features for their customers.
These are a couple of the conclusions drawn from the dinners. The most important take-away for me from these dinners, however, is the value of best practice sharing among retailers from different international markets. Everyone has something to learn from somebody else. And, Shop.org plans to continue expanding its international footprint for just this reason.
I’d like to thank the UK and French retailers for the warm reception to Shop.org at these dinners and in the numerous meetings I had during my trip.
Download MP3
(43 Minutes)
A new breed of American worker is challenging everything the old guard holds sacred: from giving orders, to dress codes. They are called “millennials.” According to media reports, there are about 80 million of them — born between 1980 and 1995, and they’re rapidly taking over from aging baby boomers. Experts suggest they were raised by doting parents who told them they are “special”, played in little leagues with no winners or losers… or all winners. They’re given trophies just for participating and many find a business-as-usual work ethic to be a waste of time. They have little time for employers with old school thinking and outdated rules!
Corporate America is so unnerved by all this that they’re hiring consultants to teach them how to deal with this generation — one that only takes “yes” for an answer. The workplace has become a psychological battlefield and online retailers find themselves in the middle of all the action.
These so-called millennials seem to have the upper hand. Why? They’re are tech savvy, with every gadget imaginable almost becoming an extension of their bodies. They multitask, talk, walk, listen and type, and text. And their priorities are simple: THEY come first.
Join a panel of experts as they candidly discuss this hot-button issue. Who are these people, really, and is what we hear in the media really true?
To what degree and to what degree is this being over-sensationalized?
What ARE the expectations of the people entering our workforce and are they out of line with those who are in need of hiring them?
Host: Jeff Molander
Panel: Amanda Watlington (SearchingForProfit.com), Michael Perham (AdKnowledge), Lee Gientke (Leadpoint.com)