Channel Intelligence Blog

New webinar from CI: How to Win in 2010

A must for any retailer hoping to compete in the various shopping channels online, our latest webinar discusses what can be learned from the retail strategies that worked in 2009 and also details important marketing pitfalls to avoid going forward.

Despite the toughest economic climate in 26 years, CI’s retailer clients were able to carve out successful strategies that resulted in positive performance well above the industry norm. Find out what they did to set themselves apart from other retailers.

The webinar is slated for Thursday, February 11, 2010, 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM EST.

Reserve your spot here: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/828722376

Several specific points of interest in retail marketing will be covered. Among the insights to be revealed are: which tactics and strategies met with success in the various shopping channels in 2009, which channels brought the biggest results, how retailers used re-targeting display ad campaigns to their advantage, and the best performing retail products and categories in 2009.

In addition, the CI team will show retailers how to determine when shopping channel campaigns should be outsourced and how to structure a performance model to guide outsourcing.

Sunday is the new Monday

Mondays are notoriously popular for online shopping during the holiday season. But Sundays are even bigger for Channel Intelligence customers.

Cyber Monday, that magical (and maybe mythical) day when Americans take advantage of their connectivity at work to knock out some holiday shopping, continues to be touted as a meaningful day -- and it is. But for CI customers it is definitely not the biggest online sales day of the season. Across the retailers using our services, Cyber Monday online sales were 31 percent lower than Thanksgiving Day and 20 percent lower than Black Friday.

Now we hear people talking about "Green Monday," which I've seen defined both as: A) The second Monday in December; and B) The last Monday that is at least 10 days before Christmas. I won't get wrapped up in the minutiae of the definition since both fit according to this year's calendar. However, from our perspective it's a moot point anyway, because the Sunday activity in recent weeks is far more interesting.

Post-Cyber Monday, the biggest year-over-year growth and the highest sales volume for our customers have been on Sundays.

Sales for Sunday, Dec. 6 were up 69 percent year-over-year on a same-store basis from the comparable Sunday in 2008. And sales for Sunday, Dec. 13 were up 62 percent YOY.

In terms of Sunday / Monday sales volume this year, Monday, Dec. 7 was 17 percent lower than the day before, and Monday, Dec. 14 was 5 percent lower than the previous day.

So why is there a shift toward Sunday buying online?

Maybe people spend the weekend browsing in the brick-and-mortar stores so they can see and touch the items, but then wait until they get home to actually pull the trigger on the purchase.

Or maybe many shoppers wait until they get the inserts in the Sunday paper and then shop online to get the advertised prices.

That's exactly what happened at my house this week, where thanks to online-offline pricing parity, my wife was able to fit in a decent amount of shopping from home before leaving to meet her girlfriends for lunch at The Cheesecake Factory.

And that, my friends, was a win-win. Because online retailers were closing sales, and I was the recipient of a slice of cheesecake to go.

Cyber Monday sales up 83 percent for CI customers

They did it again!

Comparing Cyber Monday 2009 to 2008, CI retail customers on average enjoyed an 83 percent increase in sales.

Cyber Monday’s jump this year was higher than Thanksgiving’s 67% and Black Friday’s 70% increase over last year. But looking at total sales so far this year, Thanksgiving Day still reigned with the highest consumer spending among our retailer customers, followed by Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

While total sales for Cyber Monday still trail Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday, Monday’s 83 percent jump this year was higher than Thanksgiving’s 67 percent and Black Friday’s 70 percent increase over 2008. However, Cyber Monday sales remained 37 percent lower than Black Friday’s, confirming the trend that more consumers are shopping earlier in the holiday season this year.

The shift is occurring in large part due to the extensive promotions prior to Thanksgiving as well as special Thanksgiving-only deals found online this year.

Here are some more details to chew on: Our exceptional overall customer performance was driven primarily by large-scale retailers, the top 25 percent of our retail customer base. The sales of CI’s mid-sized and small–tier retailers more closely aligned with industry averages, though still higher than those reported by ComScore. 

Here are the sales increases broken out by CI’s mid-sized and small-tier retailers:

• Thanksgiving Day: 11%
• Black Friday: 18%
• Cyber Monday: 25%

Compare that to the sales increases across all our retailer customers from 2008 to 2009:

• Thanksgiving Day: 67%
• Black Friday: 70%
• Cyber Monday: 83%

The big retailers are doing REALLY well, off to a fantastic start to the 2009 holiday shopping season.

What Changed? How Thanksgiving/Black Friday Retail Tactics Differed in 2009

This year, we saw a tremendous change in how retailers approached Black Friday.

Online promotions through email, display advertisements and both print and television advertisements all focused their attention on early Black Friday deals, followed by extended Black Friday deals during the weekend.

For the first time, we also saw retailers offering “site buster” deals that started on Thanksgiving Day courting shoppers to spend prior to the traditional “door buster” deals that typically begin at 5 AM on Black Friday.

We’re also predicting that Cyber Monday sales figures will fall somewhere below Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday but above the last free standard shipping day, which is about a week before Christmas. This could be due to home broadband penetration, since consumers don’t have to wait until they get to work on the Monday after Thanksgiving to shop online using a high speed connection.

We track online sales for many of the largest U.S. retailers across all product verticals, working with a premium roster of retail customers including HP Home and Home Office, Best Buy, Office Max, Neiman Marcus, Spiegel, Sears, Drs. Foster and Smith, Northern Tool + Equipment, Target, Golfsmith, ShoeMall, The Children’s Place, Lane Bryant, Advance Auto Parts, West Marine, ShopNBC, Things Remembered and hundreds more. Look for more insights on the 2009 holiday shopping season as data rolls in!

Our Thoughts on Cyber Monday Caught on TV

WFTV coverage of the start of the holiday shopping season included a stop by the CI offices on Monday.

Eyewitness News had been monitoring online deals all day Monday, reporting to viewers about what to expect. Reporter Melanie Holt talked with shoppers out and about and showed how this year some major retailers rolled out their major online deals well before Monday.

The Cyber Monday report featured our founder and CEO, Robert Wight, discussing how large retailers are performing this year and also what that means for holiday shoppers in terms of prices.

Read the synopsis or view the video here!

Retail Clients’ YOY Sales Increases for Thanksgiving and Black Friday Beat Industry Averages

This year, results for our online retail customers during the Thanksgiving holiday season were better than we had originally expected.

Thanksgiving Day sales for 2009 were up 67% over 2008 and Black Friday sales increased 70% for CI retailers, while Comscore found that average online retail sales on Thanksgiving Day grew 10% and Black Friday 11% over 2008.

For the second year in a row, Thanksgiving Day online sales for CI retailers were higher than those of Black Friday, this year by 8%.

In addition, the two days prior to Thanksgiving saw increased sales of 48% and 67% respectively. Post-Black Friday online sales were similarly positive with Saturday reaching a 73% increase and Sunday showing a 66% increase in sales over the same days in 2008.

Tips for Accelerating Product Sales with Google – Recorded Webinar Now Available

Our latest webinar, Accelerating Product Sales from Google, is now available online.

In this webinar, representatives from CI and Google provide tips, such as which changes to a merchant's data feed can make the biggest impact, and discuss upcoming Google enhancements that will be available for the 2009 holiday season. Access the recorded webinar here.

Some of the points addressed include:

• How to take advantage of Google's new Gallery View feature, which will soon be widely available.
• How a merchant's data feed is used to power other Google properties, including AdWords, OneBox and the Google Affiliate Network.
• What changed with the switch from Google Base to the new Google Merchant Center.
• What to do when a merchant has issues submitting a data feed to Google.
• How reviews can be used to differentiate a merchant's listing.
• Tips for promoting local stores on Google via the product data feed.

You're sure to take away about a dozen points that you can put into practice right away. Enjoy!

New Webinar: Accelerating Product Performance and Sales from Google Starts with Your Data Feed

Have some time available this afternoon? Why not stop by for our latest webinar, scheduled for today, Wednesday, October 14, 2009, from 1:00 PM to 2:00 PM EDT. 

The webinar will feature how to boost product sales through enriched product data feeds and other retailer-tested tips, as well as introduce several new innovations merchants can draw on. Guest speakers from Google, Inc. will join CI to present upcoming Google enhancements that retailers can leverage for the 2009 holiday season.

Guest speakers Vivek Tata, Associate Product Marketing Manager, and Sarah Beritzhoff, Strategic Partner Manager, of Google, Inc., will join CI’s Larry Weeks, Senior Manager of Strategic Marketing Consulting, and Rob Streeter, Sr. Manager Partner Development, to discuss ways merchants can better leverage Google for a more profitable 2009 holiday shopping season.

A foundational element often overlooked when advertising on Google is the provision of content rich, high-quality data feeds, since Google's powerful database leverages data feeds to render the merchants' products to the right consumer at the right time. Expect to learn more about this essential element and its role in successful campaigns, as well as a host of other ways to improve sales performance. 

Register here: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/954874201

Retailers, experiencing a drop in your Google Product Search results? Not with CI!

Recent talk within the retail community would have you think that changes to Google Product Search had almost brought to a standstill the search engine’s contribution to online sales for many retailers last month. Some retailers have reported declines of up to 60% and more. 

Why is it then that our retailers are seeing sales and traffic increases? 

In fact, comparing the first half of this year to that of 2008, Google Product Search sales are up 57% for retailers working with CI. In June 2009 alone, CI clients saw a 10% increase in traffic over May and a 27% increase in sales from Google Product Search.

Understandably, as Google tests new ways to improve its natural and paid search programs, the traffic and sales from Google Product Search are often affected. This can make it tough for any advertiser that doesn’t have the resources to continuously test and evaluate techniques for optimizing product content. CI helps its retailer clients actually take advantage of these changes,however,, with marketing experts that are constantly monitoring and analyzing results for individual clients and across the entire industry using CI’s advanced analytics.

Take Instawares, for example. With CI’s help, Google Product Search has been responsible for 9.4% of Instawares’ site traffic over the past year. In yesterday’s press release, Bruce Brown, CEO of Instawares noted that “with CI’s help Google has been a high performing sales channel” for them. Comparing the first half of this year to the first half of last year, traffic from Google Product Search was up 42% and sales up 21% for instawares.com.

Channel Intelligence is an official Google Product Search partner.

Shopping Engine Self Management Portal Gives Diapers.com a Much-Needed “Change”

We’d like to welcome Diapers.com on board with our SellCast® Solutions. Here’s their story…

Diapers.com had been advertising on shopping engines since 2007 but was outgrowing its initial service provider. The marketing team at Diapers.com still wanted to manage all the major aspects of their shopping engine program, but they needed better optimization of data feeds, better reporting--and most importantly, better management tools that would let them easily manipulate data feeds on-the-fly.

After evaluating offerings from several providers, they choose CI. 

Now after using our BETA Self Management Portal (due for September release) for over a month, they’re seeing an average conversion rate of about 4% and a return of over $6 for every dollar spent. 

See what Diapers.com had to say in the press release...