The Retail Email blog has a roundup of this morning’s e-commerce email blasts with attention being paid to today’s email from Saks. The e-mail, entited “8 Great Reasons to Shop Saks.com“, calls attention to some of the new and improved functionality that the retailer has added to their site. Great way to call attention to improvements on the site that may have been implemented over a period of time or that the users may not have realized are there. I think it gets them to explore new areas of the store that they may not have been aware of before.
StorefrontBacktalk has some of the early numbers from this year’s National Retail Federation annual show. Registration and exhibitors are down from last year, but international vendors who will be at the show.
In more NRF news, PredictiveRetailer has a recap of Day 1′s social media happenings. It’s a great review of blog posts and tweets referencing the day’s different sessions. Looking foward to seeing the recap for the rest of the sessions!
For those not attending the NRF Big Show, don’t forget you can use Twitter search to follow the NRF keyword to keep up to date with what’s going in in New York this week. There’s a bunch of attendees who are on Twitter and there’s been some good ideas and comments being posted there. I’ll be Tweeting from the Expo Hall tomorrow.
Wednesday
August 15, 2007
Good post this morning over at Retail Design Diva talking about how retailers are using Facebook to capture the Back to College crowd:
Students can take a quiz to discover their “decorating style” and (ta-da!) receive a list of products they can buy at Wal-Mart that best reflects their style, and their roommates’, of course. How smart is this?! Students can also search Wal-Mart’s Web site for eco-friendly products or download a shopping list of dorm room pieces. The hip, new items can then be shipped directly to the school (no furniture hauling for dad), making life a lot easier for parents and kids. And let’s be honest, mom and dad are going to be all over that, even if they don’t have a Facebook account. This idea is absolutely brilliant–and I don’t even shop at Wal-Mart.
In a world of Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, YouTube and a variety of social networking and media sites, retailers could benefit substantially from plugging in. Securing teen and college kids’ dollars is extremely lucrative. Connecting with them on their own platform is invaluable. Apparently, Wal-Mart did its research, because according to the National Retail Federation, the average first-year college student spends $1,112.62 on back-to-school gear. Cha-ching. Who’s in for setting up a MySpace account?
More from Facebook Takes Over the Retail World.
Credit to Wal-Mart to being ahead of the curve of traditional retailers in adopting new technology to reach out to customers. Curious to see how these consumers react to Wal-Mart when Target seems to have a stranglehold on this segment. Could social media technology give Wal-Mart a leg up?
Got a chance to go to the NRF Annual 2007 today. Just wanted to share a couple of quick photos from the X07: Ultimate Pop Up Boutique exhibit:
360 degree LED display by Dynascan. Really bright, really attractive video system. I can see this popping up in malls all across the country in a big way this year.
The really awesome Fogscreen. A thin, dry layer of fog is sent down from a suspended device. A video loop is shown on the screen using a projector. The best part is that you can walk through the fog (and walk through whatever is being shown on the screen). Really wild – a lot of people were taking photos and stopping by this setup.
Saturday
January 13, 2007
I know this is probably a shot in the dark – but suppose someone (me) was looking to go to the NRF Annual ’07 show on Monday in NYC, is there any reader that would be able to hook me up with an invite code to get into the Expo Hall? I have the day free and would be really interested in seeing what products are being shown and seeing what technologies are powering retail. Use the contact form to get in touch with me. I’d really like to get to this.
