February 01, 2013
What's in our mailbox this month: home furnishings catalogs. Let's get cozy.
June 01, 2012
Browsing is straightforward and pleasant on home furnishings site Laylagrayce.com.
May 01, 2012
It's "not the [IKEA] Kool-Aid" that makes IKEA North America CMO Leontyne Green such a brand evangelist. It's the relevance of the brand itself.
April 25, 2012
I'm not one who enjoys shopping (for anything), yet an expedition over to IKEA I do not mind.
1800Mattress.com launched an updated e-commerce website April 12, with the goal of giving consumers a more interactive and personalized shopping experience. The enhanced site, which allows consumers to create 1800Mattress.com profiles, also features product suggestions based on past browsing history.
Office Depot will increase its marketing to reverse its fourth-quarter and full-year 2010 results, said Neil Austrian, interim chairman and CEO, on a February 22 earnings call. Office Depot's full-year 2010 sales dropped 4% to $11.6 billion, compared with the 2009 fiscal year. Its net earnings were $30 million for full-year 2010, which ended January 30, compared with a loss of $71 million in its previous full fiscal year.
The Home Depot promoted Trish Mueller to SVP and CMO this week, replacing Frank Bifulco as the company's top marketer. Bifulco decided to leave the role after nearly three years at the company, Jean Niemi, senior manager of corporate communications, told Direct Marketing News.
August 09, 2010
Ben Argov, co-owner of high-end wine cabinet and wine cooler manufacturer Le Cache, talks about the impact new technology has had on sales and on his e-commerce sites.
July 27, 2009
Hear what Will Payovich, director of creative services at Euro RSCG Chicago, thinks of recent campaigns from Cinnabon, furntiture store company The RoomPlace and Progress Energy.
June 08, 2009
Organic brought Ethan Allen's tradition of pairing customers with designers into the digital space with an interactive design board and one-to-one sharing capabilities.
Sears Holdings Corp. is testing a new store format that has one foot in online shopping and the other in bricks and mortar retail. MyGofer "is a completely new shopping experience that offers the best of online and bricks and mortar," said Brenda Storch, a company spokeswoman. The concept is more than a buy online and pick up in store strategy, Storch continued.
May 06, 2009
Moving to a new home — whether for work, family or simply more space — is one of the great catalysts of consumer spending. The average new resident spends about $7,300 on everything from window treatments to take-out meals in the three months following a move. This spending sweet spot around a new move is prime time to reach consumers when they are most receptive to trial offers and actually looking to forge new connections.
March 23, 2009
Cambria, a producer of natural quartz countertops, has launched its first custom publication, Cambria Style, as part of a new push for consumer engagement. The glossy magazine will be sent to 18,000 Cambria customers in the brand's best-served geographic regions, which include Minneapolis, Chicago, Toronto, Charlotte and Wisconsin, among others.
Blueport Commerce, an e-commerce service provider for "considered" retail markets, launches today by the management team of Furniture.com to help those retailers create online sales opportunities.
In a move to focus its resources on its "orange box" stores, The Home Depot is exiting its EXPO business and taking steps to streamline its support functions, resulting in the loss of 7,000 jobs, or approximately 2% of the company's total work force.
Hästens, a manufacturer of handmade luxury beds with 330 retail stores worldwide, has implemented SAP CRM in its push for global growth.
Williams-Sonoma Inc. is eliminating 1,400 full-time positions, or 18% of its work force, closing a call center and a distribution facility and instituting other cutbacks as it tries to align the company's infrastructure with one of the worst retail environments in decades.
November 24, 2008
There's been a dramatic rise in the use of payment methods other than credit cards over the past few months. Online home electronics retailer Etronics reports transaction volume through eBillme during the past two months has grown 35% on the site, according to Mark Zayats, marketing director at Etronics.
As part of its strategy to step up its marketing efforts targeting Hispanic consumers, The Home Depot has launched an improved Spanish-language Web site, that is e-commerce enabled for the first time.
Specialists Marketing Services has introduced the Easy Comforts Enhanced list to the market. These are direct mail buyers of household comfort items.
KitchenAid, a division of Whirlpool Corporation Worldwide, will launch a new DRTV campaign on November 3 to promote its high-end stand mixer.
August 11, 2008
American consumers are waking to a harsh reality: We, our wallets and our natural resources are overextended, overweight and overwhelmed. The reaction is to pull back and say, "less." The push away from mega-consumption is today's mega-trend.
July 24, 2008
Less than a year old, Facebook's Pages application allows brands to join the social networking masses - but can it be used as a DM tactic?
July 21, 2008
Beginning with its July 28 catalog, furniture merchant Ikea will include an insert that offers customers the opportunity to get discounts by answering trivia questions on their mobile phones. Those that interact with the national mobile promotion are also encouraged to register at the Ikea Web site to enter to win a $10,000 Ikea shopping spree.
Overstock.com has partnered with three other companies in an effort to make its overall site experience, and particularly its search function, more user-friendly. The online retailer has partnered with Omniture Inc., Bazaarvoice and Mercado, using integrated solutions from the three companies through Omniture Genesis to employ a strategy the company calls "searchandising"—the usage of on-site search terms, user-generated product reviews and analytics to optimize product merchandising and relevance for site users.
The management-led buyout of Restoration Hardware Inc. has been completed, thereby taking the multichannel merchant private. Restoration Hardware's common stock ceased trading on NASDAQ prior to the opening of the market on June 18 and will no longer be listed on NASDAQ.
The Millard Group has introduced the Linensource Alexa list to the market. Linensource catalog offers bedding, bath and home furnishing products such as dinnerware, rugs, fixtures and furniture.
Hachette Filipacchi Media US' Home magazine and the Woman's Day Special Interest Publications (WDSIP) recently promoted Cathy Christino to associate publisher/marketing. Jack Grant, VP/publisher, Home magazine, talked to DMNews about creating the new position and the importance of integrated marketing strategies.
May 27, 2008
In a move to more deeply engage readers, This Old House magazine has created its June issue entirely from reader-submitted ideas, stories and pictures.
Online home improvement retailer Polsteins Home & Beyond recently adopted eWayDirect's e-mail platform to improve its retention marketing efforts with the channel. Edison, NJ-based Home & Beyond will be using the online service company's e-mail marketing platform with its pre-existing consumer database.
Company of the week R2C GroupR2C creates, produces, distributes and measures messages that inspire and compel consumers to do something with a brand to drive commercial advantage. The full-service advertising agency specializes in creative, production, media, analytics and performance. |
What's in our mailbox this month: fitness postcards from Retro Fitness, American Woman Fitness Centers, Union's United Taekwondo Academy, and Bally Total Fitness. (We're totally pumped.)
Social data can improve a brand's bottom line and customer relationships. Just ask brands Infiniti and Diamond Nexus.
Here are three must-have data sets that every marketer should include in his or her email strategy.
