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Once known as a Secret Santa website, Elfster has refashioned itself as a social gifting platform for online shoppers and merchants. This year, the company added dozens of new affiliate brands to its growing roster of shoppable merchants, including Away and Allbirds.
As e-commerce growth slows and brands figure out their retention strategies, marketers are ramping up preparations for the death of Google Chrome's third-party cookie. While data-collecting methods like loyalty program and community-building have become standard, some merchants are rethinking their website design and advertising budgets for a cookie-less world.
Almost every e-commerce brand offers customers promotions for referring friends. However, the effectiveness of this customer acquisition method is hard to measure. It's why DTC eyewear brand EyeBuyDirect has redesigned its referral program to get more customers to use it throughout the year.
Since TikTok began launching e-commerce tools like its ad platform, major brands have quickly jumped at the chance of marketing on the platform. However, TikTok's conversion rates are still relatively low and heavily reliant on virality. This is prompting young brands to use it in creative ways to grow their businesses.
Home decor and board games are the latest pandemic strange bedfellows, as home brands and retailers increasingly take inspiration from table-top classics. Ahead of the holiday season, for example, Anthropologie is releasing its own line of special edition, luxury Hasbro board games.
For young startups, in-person sampling is quickly becoming archaic. For decades, CPG companies relied on in-store sample stands to get customers to try their products in the hope of getting feedback and drive sales. However, a slew of digital sampling platforms are giving brands an alternative to traditional sampling.
As loyalty programs become the norm, customers' expectations are getting higher. While more brands continue to launch new rewards hubs, some, like Peet's Coffee, are looking to improve on their existing programs to draw higher customer engagement.
Heinz is the latest in a growing line of brands to embrace live video shopping. In late October, the company worked with livestream e-commerce specialist Firework to take viewers inside its Halloween pop-up store in Santa Monica, California. The condiment giant’s adoption of shoppable live video is part of parent Kraft Heinz’s growing online marketing strategy.
As the supply chain’s problems have grown into a clear obstacle for many brands and retailers, that shift hasn’t been enough to drastically change the holiday promotion strategies for a majority of brands, according to new Modern Retail research.
With at-home haircare becoming popular among consumers during the coronavirus pandemic, brands are looking for ways to reach these customers. One example is hair coloring brand Clairol, which recently tested digital campaigns to help drive sales at Target during a Clairol products sale.
This week, Amazon rolled out two month-long sales events, signaling a move from the brief holiday blitzes of Prime Day and Cyber Monday, into an earlier and longer seasonal playbook. As supply chain issues threaten product stockouts, Amazon and other retailers are shifting their holiday sales strategies across more days, earlier, to get consumers shopping now.
Major retailers have all already launched their holiday top toys lists, pushing parents to buy the hottest toys now before holiday season stockouts arise. Companies from Target to Walmart to Macy's are pushing customers to buy toys early, but big hurdles still lie ahead.
Diageo is opening a 72,000 square foot, carbon-neutral distillery in Kentucky, set to product ten million proof gallons of whiskey a year. The brand's embrace of carbon-neutrality highlights larger manufacturers’ growing interest in sustainability, as well as increased consumer demand for transparent products.
Over the years, young direct-to-consumer brands relied on Facebook's algorithm to cheaply find new customers. As Facebook's cost-per-click increase and it continues to grapple with the latest Apple iOS update, brands are looking to get back to basics. Some are trying out discovery platforms like Pinterest and YouTube Shorts, others are re-investing in the trusty Google Search.
Last week, the privately-held Subway announced “positive same store sales” in the second quarter, as well as 4% growth in August 2021 sales compared to 2019. However, analysts are still skeptical: Subway’s growth actually underpaces the restaurant industry’s average, and its rebrand highlights the challenges the “largest restaurant chain in the world” is facing.
Hiring is a challenge for many retailers this year, prompting companies to incentivize candidates with increased pay and perks. However, the traditional retail hiring practice is also part of the problem. The Body Shop's newly-implemented "open hiring" method, which removes several application barriers, is helping the company staff its stores and warehouses.
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